Lou Holtz, a Notre Dame football coach, once said, “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done”. This can definitely be applied to a lot of organizations in the current climate. Quality and especially total quality has taken a nosedive and sometimes can’t even be described as even minimum. Good intentions aren’t cutting it in this environment and many efforts to improve are not up to par. When the Conference Board of Canada executed a study they found that seven out of ten North American companies failed in trying a total quality strategy. Of course most North American companies haven’t even tried it and have instead opted for only partial quality management.

To start with, what exactly is total quality management? It is a style or strategy that business can implement to improve the company as a whole. It is a strategy that involves every part of the business, all the way from the top down. It strives to make all departments in the corporation aware of the quality of work or service they are providing and what they can do to improve overall quality. Most companies that use it are service oriented but manufacturers, government, education and even NASA are using it. So how can you make it work for you and your company? There are definitely some key ingredients in making total quality management style work for your company or for any company for that matter. Let’s look at some of them.

One of these includes senior management involvement. All the encouragement in the world will not make up for actual involvement from the top. Usually top people don’t want to be bothered with the mundane stuff such as total quality management. Yet if the common employee doesn’t see the people at the top working hard to implement the program they are less likely to work hard in achieving it as well. On the contrary when the top is completely trained first and even help train other employees it is so much easier to get everyone on the same page.

Another important step is knowing exactly when and how to implement teams in setting up a system of total quality management. If a company isn’t ready to fully support the teams they are creating it can have consequences that are ruinous for all involved. A good idea is to have trial teams of only one or two to start with and try any new ideas out on them before investing more manpower and time into it. This can help to avoid also the pitfall of not having enough senior management involvement, by avoiding to many people spitting out ideas and overwhelming the senior management to the point of giving up.

Planning is a huge step in the success of implementing total management quality strategies in the workplace. Enough time, money and effort needs to be put into it in order for the strategy to be successful. Planning for this strategy is just as important as good business planning. Reporting the progress, especially to the common employee helps to keep them involved in what is going on and helps keep everyone together.

One very key element in approaching quality management as a total strategy rather than a partial one is making sure that there is a broad and balanced approach. Focusing on certain areas and techniques, which may improve some things but not others, will certainly not achieve the goal of total quality management. Getting all employees involved and all departments involved and improving each one can help bring about a total change instead of just partial.

The last thing that will help in total quality management is making sure that you go beyond just training sessions with endless presentations. Following through on these training sessions with practice and lots of it, can form habits that will lead to total quality improvement much easier than if what is learned at a training session is seen once and never used again. The bottom line in total quality management strategies versus only partial quality management strategies is to get everyone or as many people in the company involved as possible. This will help ensure a much better chance at not just part of the company improving quality, but allow the company as a whole to move forward through total quality management.

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4. A Crash Course in Strategic Planning: Important Things You Should Know
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